Last few days has seen an increase in the pain in my upper arm: now it isn't anything continuously so bad that i am climbing the walls, but it has been on and off getting me down. A conversation I had with Andrew Thorne of the Pain Management Group some time back suggested that it was always possible to increase the dose of morphine or gabapentin to compensate for this.
I have currently been taking 60mg morphine along with other meds so a couple of days ago decided to increase that to 90mg. As well as that the regime is based on doses of the morphine and gabapentin and paracetamol in various combinations at 8am, midday, 4pm and 8pm. What wasn't covered was the time between 8pm and 8 am. Seemed a bit silly because when you sleep, and are immobile for several hours, on waking up thats a time when the arm really hurts.
Anyway, to counteract that I have added a couple of doses through the night to keep the baseline topped up, as I tend to wake up every couple of hours anyway. Added to that I have the liquid morphine which can be used to counteract sudden breakthrough pain if all else fails: and last couple of days the arm has not troubled me very much at all. I have also been very conscious to be pro-active regards not over stressing the arm, or using it too much as that often promotes pain: lift something too heavy or pull too hard on a shirt sleeve and 15 minutes later, pain.
Yesterday and today as a result of the better regime I have woken with little or no pain and I have to say that I feel pretty good today. Long may it continue
The sudden realisation that you have cancer hits you like a sledgehammer. On 9th February after 2 months of tests and all sorts thats what they told me. In more ways than one it's a life-changing moment and your mind goes into overdrive thinking all kinds of worst case scenarios.
Wonderful things pain killers they make being poorly far less painful and in my case a bit spangled..
ReplyDeleteIan